May 3 (Bloomberg) -- More than 20 compounds that Pfizer
Inc., Eli Lilly & Co. and AstraZeneca Plc failed to turn into
drugs will be tested by U.S.-sponsored scientists in a $20
million program to see if they’ll work against ailments they
weren’t aimed at previously.

If the compounds are effective, the time to market will be
shorter and the drugmakers, who retain ownership of the
compounds, will share profits with researchers. Traditionally,
companies spend about $2 billion and take 14 years to develop
therapies, a so-called valley-of-death commitment that’s made
drugmakers move cautiously in deciding which illness to target.

The joint program, a first for the National Institutes of
Health, is designed to lessen drugmakers’ risk, funded by $575
million in President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget. The
agency cited the HIV treatment AZT, created from failed attempts
to treat cancer, in explaining the partnership.

“We need to generate more of these success stories in a
more systematic manner,” NIH director Francis Collins said
during a news conference announcing the agreements..

The compounds that New York-based Pfizer, the world’s
largest drugmaker, Indianapolis-based Lilly and London-based
AstraZeneca will make available already have been found safe in
humans. The drugmakers will give researchers access to the
chemicals and related data, company officials said.

‘Just Benefits’

“For us, there is just benefits, in a way,” said Jan
Lundberg, executive vice president for science and technology at
Lilly.

Drugmakers will have to provide the compounds to
researchers, which may requiring manufacturing more of the
substances, Lundberg said today in an interview. The companies
also face costs for maintaining patents on the compounds and for
gathering and transmitting clinical data to scientists, said Don
Frail, vice president for science and new opportunities at
London-based AstraZeneca.

“There’s not a shelf of discontinued compounds that you
can just pull one off and give to somebody,” Frail said in an
interview. Clinical supplies alone, should the compounds enter
human trials, may cost as much as $1 million, he said.

Collins said he is hopeful the work will lead to new
treatments for diseases of the central nervous system, which
have proved so difficult to attack that drug companies are
dissuaded from investing in them.

‘Health Crises’

Rod Mackenzie, a senior vice president at Pfizer, said
neurological diseases are “one of the great health crises we
face across the globe.”

“We need to do better there,” he said during the news
conference.

Should the drugs prove effective against a new disease, the
companies will have the option to develop them into a marketed
product, the agency said. Taxpayers would get a financial
benefit only if an NIH scientist is a researcher on one of the
compounds. Then royalties would flow back to the U.S. agency.

“Americans are eagerly awaiting the next generation of
cures and treatments to help them live longer and healthier
lives,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen
Sebelius, in a statement. “To accelerate our nation’s
therapeutic development process, it is essential that we forge
strong, innovative and strategic partnerships across government,
academia and industry.”

The bottom-line benefit for the public is societal, Collins
said. Diseases that don’t have treatments now may get one, he
said.